Game Overview
Dead Rising follows the harrowing adventures of Frank West, an overly zealous freelance photojournalist on a hunt for the scoop of a lifetime. The town he inhabits has become infested with bloodthirsty zombies and chaos reigns.

You'll start Dead Rising off and think "Do I really want to open this door?" however the fright factor is next to nothing, it's very predictable as to were zombies are going to be located and there are so many of the buggers it almost becomes the norm running in and out of them. Swarm technology is only possible thanks to the next gen power of the 360, before you know it you'll have 500 zombies all on screen at once and you'll leave a small brown mark in your pants!

The graphics are somewhat spectacular and HD really prevails with this title (we really love next gen gaming), one scene in Dead Rising is in a grocery store where you have to get hold of a first aid kit, you are confronted by a very disturbed, psychopathic shop owner with a trolley kitted out with blood stained broom handles, rusty garden fork and a shotgun! Needless to say you don't really want to stick about for to long! Whilst the cut scene is playing your character Frank walks past some items neatly lined up on the shelf, this is where you realize how good graphics are becoming these days. The cans look perfect in every way and the HD (if you have an HDTV) really stands out almost so much that you can read the small print on the cans!

A big gripe we have with Dead Rising is the "missions" it never makes it clear what you are supposed to be doing, you will have the option to run off and save people around the mall from being brutally murdered by a pack of zombies all day long but it never makes it clear as to which ones they actually want you to do in order to progress the story. As you have a time limit for each "mission" once the one you are required to do runs out of time the game is over and your have to load up and start again, which is highly frustrating! (We'll come back to that in a minute). In order to progress in Dead Rising certain tasks need to be accomplished by a certain time, if you get to distracted seeing how many ways you can kill a zombie and miss one of these tasks you will have to start the game over, it happened to us once already and unfortunately it's another something to add to the "reasons to get frustrated" list.

Save points! Why can't games like this have an auto save function after you have completed a certain part of the story, too many times we have struggled to get past a certain point in the game then on the way to the save point, which are few and far between, we have been killed and have to go through it all over again, another highly frustrating problem. We aren't saying that it HAS to have a auto save feature but more save points would be nice!

There is a lot of tooing and frowing in Dead Rising, going through the same corridors to get downstairs to where the action is and then back through those same corridors to drop off someone you have saved, it does get a little tedious in all fairness but don't let that put you off what has to be one of the best games so far this year.

The gameplay is very addictive and the fact that you can pick almost anything up from around the mall and bash a zombie over the head with it is a brilliant novelty that so far doesn't seem to be wearing thin at all, you think you have exhausted all the weapons then you find another section to the mall with even more weapons including, potted plants, toy swords, cans of coke, dustbins, knives, guns, chairs, benches, parasols, signs, stools, mannequins and even dead zombies limbs! It has it all!

Our Conclusions
It's like a more violent version of Shaun of the Dead, lots of action, lots of blood, a very confusing storyline (which we are still to get to the end of) but all in all a top notch game that is set to dominate the 360 charts this year, eagerly awaited and you can see why, make sure you buy Dead Rising you'll regret it if you don't but we wouldn't recommend letting the kids play it!

Overall Score: 8/10

Thanks to Lunch PR and Capcom.